


Where've you gone

by Clearblueskies



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Battle Of Five Armies, Gen, Legolas makes a brief appearance, Non-Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3895930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clearblueskies/pseuds/Clearblueskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thranduil’s hair is crimson, his mouth white. Thorin feels heavy, so heavy― he tells himself that’s all that makes him bend and sit with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where've you gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DragoninaTree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragoninaTree/gifts).



> This has never been beta proofed, sadly, but the nagging of a certain someone has seen to it that it enters (semi) public domain.

He feels like a large stone that has been dropped into a shallow creek; fast sunk and too easily spotted, even here, in the grey and desolate wilderness.

Ravenhill is bleak and filled with echoing cries; orc, dwarf and elven alike. The sound travels oddly here, among the harsh rock and unruly planes, seeping around his ears like dying embers before returning from elsewhere like sharp clangs; battle yells and death rattles.

Thorin is alone coming down the mountainside, his forehead bleeding sluggishly and the vision in his right eye oddly contorted and blurring occasionally. But his pace is steady.

This is him, alone and traversing a deathly downwards slope, when he comes across a pale shape, cast aside a rocky ledge like any other number of bodies Thorin has seen that day. But it is not just any other body, neither dwarven nor man.

Thranduil looks like wreckage, his chest half caved in, the remaining side moving in an odd, jerking rhythm as he struggles for breath. Over the ledge lies a white warg; familiar to Thorin, the sight of it carrying with it the memories of a pale, scarred face. Underneath it, a white arm is visible, the flesh ending abruptly mid-forearm in a bloodied stump. Throat tightening, he surveys the rest of the orc-filth strewn about the clearing. There are many of them, but none of them living. He leaves the thin, ambling path, turning instead fully towards the ledge and the fallen. It is not far, but Thorin is slow, his body not moving quite the way he wants it to.

He stands above him, the Elvenking. He’d wanted this, for a moment, one that seems so long ago now that he no longer recalls why.

Mirkwood’s king is silent, blue eyes staring into the clouded skies. Thranduil’s hair is crimson; his mouth so dreadfully white Thorin knows there will be no saving him. Thorin feels abruptly heavy, so heavy― vision blurring in both eyes, and he tells himself that’s all that makes him sit with him, this infernal tiredness. He sits on his left, where the elf is mostly hale. Thranduil does not acknowledge him for several passing moments, eyes still fixed on the heavens. Silence passes, only the odd echoes of knells and whispers in the wind. Just when Thorin thinks to break the infernal silence himself, Thranduil’s motionless face breaks apart like splintering wood, leaving his expression abruptly open and bereft;

 _“To think I cannot even die under starlight, how wretched this end truly is.”_ He rasps wetly, and it would sound amused, were it not for the bereaved look clinging to his face. Even now, his voice is lovely, the sound of it like ripped silk across the pale stone around them. Thorin does not know quite what to say, so he locates Thranduil’s long, cold fingers between them instead, squeezing them once within his own larger ones. He sits there for a while, holding his thin hand within his larger one, feeling it cool despite the warmth around it. Every so often, Thranduil’s chest will seize and spasm, breath halting within the remaining lung as his body fights to keep the mess of him together. It is horrible to watch, but Thorin’s legs have long since gone numb, and he doesn’t trust them to keep his weight if he were to stand. He tells himself that’s all it is.

He doesn’t care if he leaves Thranduil here to die alone, for his body to rot among orc filth and whatever else that may crawl this way. When Thranduil’s body starts to still, his chest calming like a bird folding up for sleep, Thorin squeezes his hand again, the flesh like marble in his grasp.

“Are you going?” he asks, his voice a rasping thing that doesn’t startle the Elvenking at all. Thranduil tenses, his eyes near white amidst the dark ash of his lashes, and Thorin follows his gaping look to the skies, one good eye searching― but he need not look long, a fierce, burning light so bright in the grey skies that Thorin couldn’t have missed it if he’d tried. A star: as beautiful and searing as he’d ever seen one, faithfully clinging to the skies right above them.

Thranduil gasps low and wet, his marbled fingers going slack inside Thorin’s own. The stone shelf is abruptly silent, not even the wind bringing its usual noise. When Thorin looks down upon him, his face is smooth and still, dark lashes resting against white cheeks. His chest does not rise no matter how long Thorin awaits the former jerking hitches, body unmoving and even quieter in death than his kind is in life.

He sits there for a handful of minutes, folding the white hand across the ruined, silver chest, then the other. There are no flowers here, but he thinks they’d prefer ones from their own forest anyway.

He’s only just managed to stand, numb legs shaking and steady as leaves beneath him, when a lone cry slashes across the mountainside, a long, drawn out noise that is both terrible and lovely to hear.

A familiar, fair-haired form, so fast it could’ve been flying across the mountainside is headed straight towards them, and even from this distance with but one good eye Thorin instinctively knows who it is. The cry is not for him, but he stays anyway, hunching badly in on himself as he awaits the elf.

The prince of Mirkwood is wide eyed and white faced, almost as pale as his father when he at last reaches them.

Across the mountain side, the wind howls like a wild, hurting thing, the far off echoes of voices almost indistinguishable from the keens and cries next to the dead king of Mirkwood.

Thorin’s remaining good eye blurs along with the other, until all he sees is blurs of gold and crimson, hunkered upon a vast expanse of grey.

He turns his back to it, eyes closing against from the brightness, from the sharpness of the wind. In the distance, a familiar voice calls. Thorin draws a heavy hand across his stinging brow, and turns once more towards the mountain path, pace no less steady than before.

 

**Fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope you sort of enjoyed that! god knows it's given me a nervous tick just publishing it...


End file.
